


Soul Searching

by AnnaofAza



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Consensual Mind Reading, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mentions of hell, POV Dean Winchester, Post-Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, Safe for Booky, Soul Bond, Suicidal Thoughts, kind of Au-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2014-11-08
Packaged: 2018-02-24 14:02:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2583986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaofAza/pseuds/AnnaofAza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why do I have to keep saying this to you? Do I have to prove it to you?”</p><p>In his failure to save his little brother from being pulled into the Cage, Dean believes he's utterly, completely worthless. Castiel shows him otherwise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soul Searching

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bookkbaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bookkbaby/gifts).



> For Bookkbaby, who requested "soul-bonding." I hope you like it!

Everything is empty. Everything is silent. 

 It feels like a cliché, but that's what it feels like to Dean. He's driving in the front seat of the Impala, but there's no Sam in the passenger seat beside him. 

_It's okay._

It was so Sammy. Even when he was sacrificing himself to save the world—throwing himself into that goddamned pit to Hell, that fucking source of Dean's nightmares—he was still, in his own way, protecting Dean. 

_It's gonna be okay._

His little brother had looked terrified, utterly scared, but determined. Brave. A hero. And when Michael reached for his arm, Sam had grabbed him, just the way Dean had taught him long ago, and tugged him—

_I got him._

Gone. Gone. 

Dean briefly closes his eyes, fingers shaking on the wheel. He'll have to pull over. 

 _What's the point?_ He suddenly thinks. _What does it matter?_

But he can't. He promised Sam, an oath to keep on the final breath, but there's more. He's scared. He's scared of what lies beyond; he's scared of the unknown; he's scared of falling into the darkness. All his life, he was told to fear the dark, and all his life, he did. The finality of it—of surrendering—sent alarm bells off in his head, enough to startle him into drawing his feet back off the ledge. 

He's alone. Dean's always known that—his parents and Ellen and Jo and Ash are gone, and he knows he wouldn't be able to look at Bobby without being reminded of Sam—but now, it feels so profound. He's the last man on earth. 

A presence appears in the seat next to him. For a brief, foolish moment of elation, he thinks, _Sam._

It's not. It's Cas. 

Dean tries to do what he does best: swallow it all down and pretend everything is normal. But it can't. He realizes he's not alone. Dean feels as if the moment that Cas walked through those barn doors, all sparks and stars, something had irrevocably changed, and he couldn't picture a future without him. 

But just like Sam, Cas won't stick around. Cas is going back to Heaven. Cas is leaving him. Alone. 

Before he knows it, anger rises in his throat, salty and bitter like an aftertaste of tears. Sam didn't choose to leave. Dean dragged him into this life, made him sacrifice everything Sam always dreamed of, and watched the brother he swore to always protect die to fix his own mistake. Now, Cas was brought back by the grace of God or some shit like that, and he's choosing to leave. 

"What about me, huh?" He suddenly rages. He doesn't shout. He doesn't have the energy, but there's pure resentful fury buried in every syllable. "Where's my grand prize? All I got is my brother in a hole!"

Cas is strangely calm, the feathery dickhead ass. "You got what you asked for, Dean," Cas tells him bluntly. "No paradise. No hell. Just more of the same."   Dean doesn't look when the angel turns to at him. "I mean it, Dean. What would you rather have? Peace or freedom?"

"Why does it have to be a choice?" Dean asks wearily. Only a few days ago, he would have immediately picked "freedom." But now...

Maybe this is some _Brave New World_ shit Cas is trying out on him. Maybe it's a riddle, like "without true freedom, there is no peace." Maybe the two can't co-exist without sacrificing a little of one. 

Sacrifice. It seems too late to be tired of that, but Dean feels it down to the bone, worn down by Cas' silence. 

"You don't know the answer, do you?" Cas, almost gently, inquires. 

"I'm pulling the car over." Dean snaps, and does that, right on the edge of the road. He nearly falls while getting out of the car, and Cas is right next to him to catch him, but Dean refuses his help. Sparse trees jot the ground, and he reaches out and leans on one, legs as limp as jelly. The bark is cool underneath his fingers. Rough, too, with grit encrusted in the edges. Dean digs his fingers in further, wanting to feel something. 

"Dean," Cas is saying in that infuriatingly gentle tone, and Dean breaks. 

He starts sobbing, bawling Iike he never got to since four years old. His lungs and chest rack in embarrassingly loud hiccups and wordless wails. Dean feels dirt underneath his nails and on his palms and realizes he's on the ground. The night air snaps against his face. 

When he's done, Cas lays two fingertips on his forehead, cleaning off the tears and slime and dirt. 

"I want to die, Cas," Dean says numbly. He wants to explode, curse, rage, shoot something full of bullets, but he can't pick himself off the ground. 

"I know. I know, Dean." 

"You don't understand," Dean replies bitterly. "You're now God's bitch again, I hear you. Shut up, Dean; suck it up, Dean; it was for the greater good of the world, Dean. I get it." 

Cas grabs both of his shoulders and gives them a firm shake. "How could you believe I would think that? Sam was my friend, too, Dean. Perhaps I cannot fully understand these human emotions, this great love for a brother, but I know you, Dean Winchester, and I will not let you think of yourself in this way." 

Dean can’t stand this. He doesn’t want Cas to care, for anyone to care—to pity him and treat him differently just because he had a sob story. Dad hated that—snapping at concerned teachers and counselors who tried to pick apart his sorrow and diagnose him as something or other—and made sure his sons hated it, too. _Don’t let anyone feel sorry for you. That’s all on you, and you have to deal with it._

 _Enough,_ Dean thinks.

“This isn’t about me. This is about Sam. I miss him.”

Really, he means: _Leave me alone. Sam was my fault. I will never forget that._

“There’s nothing you could have done. You’re not worthless, and I won’t allow yourself to put the blame entirely on your shoulders.”

 It’s really how uncanny Cas’ sixth sense or whatever is. Dean, startled, jerks away from Cas’ grip on his shoulders, and the angel lets him.

 He can’t stand this any longer. Dean wants Cas to go so that he can sort through his head in peace, cut up the huge situation into small enough pieces to fit in boxes that he can label and pack away. “You should have left me in Hell,” Dean spits, making his eyes emote hate—at Cas, even though all of it is reserved for himself, but hopefully, the angel won’t know that.

Instead, Cas grasps his left shoulder with clenched fingers, and a brief, heated flash seems to pierce that affected area. Dean gasps, startled, when as he feels _protect-anger-grief-terror_ rip through his chest with all the force and quickness of lightning.

" _Never say that.”_ There’s fierce fire in Cas’ eyes. “Don’t ever say that, especially not to me.”

His shoulder’s tingling with a thousand little sparks that burn. Dean almost whimpers at the sensation, and realizes that Cas’ hand is still in place. His heart is swelling like a helium-filled balloon, taking up too much room in his chest and straining to press beyond the contours. It’s on the verge of filling him up too much, too high, too intense—

 _“Stop,”_ he hears himself plead. “You’re _hurting_ me, _stop.”_

Cas immediately yanks his hand away with a startled widening of his eyes, and Dean nearly gasps, simultaneously in relief and longing, like being awakened from the drug-haze of surgery—relieved to not be so vulnerable, but longing for oblivion from the pain that’s beginning to set in.

“Dean, I’m sorry—I—“

“What _was_ that?”

“I lost control, and I—“ Cas seems on the verge on fluttering away. Dean won’t let that happen, not when he feels—not when he feels like fireworks exploded all at once in his chest and head, leaving behind a thick cloud of smoke. So he grabs the trenchcoat with both hands, tugging backwards, and ends up pulling a startled Cas by his lapels no closer than a few inches from his face.

“Tell me,” Dean demands.

Cas seems to be fighting an internal battle in his head of what to say, but it’s clear he has no words to give except the blunt truth:

“We have a profound bond.”

There’s silence.

“I don’t get— _how?”_

“When I pulled you out of Hell, you were fighting me. I thought it was because you were afraid, so I reached out with my Grace to comfort you and to begin to heal the damage of Hell.” There seems to be more to it than that, and Dean waits with bated breath until Cas can continue. “Before humans laid foot on this earth, they used to communicate as angels did: with their souls. Without words or speech, they would touch each other’s thoughts and emotions.”

“Like fish,” Dean says, trying to make sense of it.

Cas looks mildly disgruntled with this suggestion. “In a way. And at both of our barest forms, we couldn’t speak as we are doing now.”

Dean waits again. Cas takes a deep breath, even though he surely has no need to. It’s surprisingly _human,_ and Dean feels himself relaxing.

"Souls are instinctual,” Cas explains, not really looking at him. He’s instead looking _past_ Dean, too far away, eyes fixed on something invisible behind him. “They remember what once was. You—you reached out for me, and I responded. I was a fool for doing so. In my haste to communicate with you, I forgot that you were, at the core, human, and that it wasn’t in my orders to speak with _you._ It was too intense for your soul, and it branded you when my—well, where on my human vessel there would be hands, to be exact.” His voice is far away. “I tried to remove it—I did—but it was too strong at the time, and I was weakened from Hell. After that, my power returned, but I thought nothing of it. I must have…forgotten.”

There’s an ache in Dean’s arm, radiating to his chest, as if a blade had been drawn out too quickly.

“Why did you remove it now?” Dean asks.

Cas doesn’t answer. “Your soul was brighter than anything I had ever seen,” he says instead, almost dreamily. “I still remember it, and I still see it.”

Goose pimples raise up all over his arms. “That’s probably because I’m—I _was_ Michael’s vessel, Cas.”

“No.” Cas shakes his head. “I thought that, briefly, but no. Michael is in the Cage now, and you are no longer his vessel. And Adam—your brother’s soul didn’t shine as brightly as yours.” 

 _Adam._ Another brother he had failed. Dean closes his eyes and tips his head back so he’s looking at the stars. They shine brightly, away from the city’s touch. What do souls look like to angels? Do they look like the stars, the moon, or the sun?

“There’s no way.” Dean mutters, almost to himself. “You’re—“ _Lying._ Cas has lied to him before, but that was a long time ago, when the angels were messing with his head, programming orders and demanding obedience. And it was always of tactical things, battle plans, things like that. Cas had no problem telling Dean what he thought of him, and they always carried such a weight. _You’re important. You’re needed. You’re—_

No.

He’s going to _Lisa’s._ He’s promised Sam. The apple pie life—the traditional house, girl, and kid—not whatever he’s thinking about now. Dean has to remember that Cas is leaving _without_ him. For good, it seems. Reorganizing Heaven and _ruling_ it—that can take years, too many years for Dean to wait—

But he won’t wait. Cas won’t, either.

“I’m speaking honestly, Dean. Your soul is beautiful.”

Something in Dean’s psyche violently reacts to this. “ _No.”_ He steps backward, and feels an almost snapping sensation from the loss of contact. “It’s—I’m not— _no._ Whatever you’re saying isn’t true. What, I was a beacon of light for you in Hell? I _took_ the light, Cas. I _was_ the darkness!”

“Why do I have to keep saying this to you?” Cas snaps back. “Do I have to _prove_ it to you?”

“Bring it on,” Dean snarls. “I bet you can’t—“

“Say yes.”

Dean starts, and Cas rephrases: “I know how to prove this to you, Dean. I can touch your soul and _show_ you.”

“You need consent?” 

"Technically speaking, I can simply reach into your soul and pry through it, but I want you to choose whether you trust me." 

 Dean doesn't hesitate. "I do." That has never stopped, from the moment Cas backed him against the wall of the Green Room, his hand over Dean's mouth, eyes pleading with a _trust me_ , waiting for Dean's nod.

"Dean, this...communicating souls is intimate. It is commonplace with angels. It's a common form, a way to exchange information and emotions. But with a human...it can get intense. You feel what I feel." 

“I got it,” Dean says, too carelessly.

Cas hesitates, but lays his hand almost gently over where the handprint used to be. Dean swallows, and something inside him struggles at the intrusion, a brief _no, no, no,_ before it recognizes the presence and pulls them both under, Dean's touched-starved soul reaching eagerly for the warmth, the light... 

 _Pain. Endless pain._ _Joy. Unspeakable joy. Poison worming into his heart, wriggling in through all the cracks, biting like bitter, metallic fuel, like—_

_Like what? There’s no home here._

_This is no place for me._

_Yes, there is. I belong here. I deserve to be here._

_Light. Light, like...like...fireworks on the Fourth of July. Light like Mom's eyes when she laughed and gathered him up in her arms. Light like watching Sammy grabbing at the gifts he'd worked so hard to honestly earn this time around. Light like the sun beating down on his face in the Impala. Light like...like..._

_Demons around them scream in agony as the light hits their eyes. Some try to run, shielding their grotesque faces with twisted arms, but they burn from the inside out. It's efficient, but brutally beautiful, watching Hell burn in a way never intended to, with love and light and goodness, with wings that stretch out for miles..._

_Sam was right? No, it can't be..._

_One of the lights passes over him, and the glow...the glow is beautiful. Mom cutting up sandwich crusts at the kitchen table. Sammy holding him close in the dark. Eating pecan pie at Thanksgiving, with big bellows of laughter from Dad. Spinning the wheel of his baby around an empty road, music turned up too loud. Saving a small kid from the depths of the water, then a family, then more..._

_The light suddenly grabs him, swooping him up, carrying him away._

_No, no, please, no...let me go, let me go..._

_You're being saved, Dean Winchester. I'm sorry we couldn't have reached you earlier._

_No, please, don't hurt me like that. Please just kill me. Please..._

_No. You are the Righteous Man, I see it—_

_I'm not, no, you see what I did to those souls, put me back, put me back on the rack, please..._

_No. You are the Righteous Man, covered with blood and fire as you are. You are saved. You are loved. I'm taking you home._

_Sam...Sammy?_

_Yes._

_No. No, this can't be. This is a trick of Alastair's, some sick punishment, some dream, some nightmare. I will never see Sam again. I won't._

_You will. I see you, Dean Winchester. I've seen you hold your brother in your arms after the fire that killed your mother. I've seen you throw yourself in front of monsters to save others. I've seen you kiss your first girl, then your first boy. I've seen you laugh with joy when your father gave you keys to his car. I've seen you sing on the long, open road to a hunt. I've seen you sacrifice yourself for your brother. I've seen you break, I've seen you weep, I've seen you slay, I've seen you stripped to the soul and endure more than I believed. I see you as you are, Dean Winchester. And I proclaim, that on this day, that_

_DEAN WINCHESTER IS SAVED._

_Now: the Righteous Man rising from his earth, making his way to the store and the phone and the car he had set out for him to find his way home, and staring at the vessel that stepped slowly into the barn. (This was the beginning, though I did not know it.)_

_Dean Winchester bowing in the shadows, doubt clinging to him like a second skin. (You deserved to be saved. I told you that, and you didn't remember.)_

_Dean's eyes, wide with fear at the threat of Hell. (Oh, Dean, I would have never...)_

_Dean, watching his family fall apart with his own eyes before anything had really started. (Why didn't I just tell you? Your face...)_

_Dean on the bench, defiant but trusting. (I had an inkling of why I trusted you so implicitly, but I never admitted that.)_

_Dean, lost in his nightmares of Hell, the knife, Alastair. (I built a wall, Dean, but Hell is powerful.)_

_Dean's eyes, astonished and hurt. (They ripped me apart up there, you must understand, they stripped me down to the core, and they how to reach me...)_

_Dean, broken in many ways, too many ways, on the hospital bed. (So much. Too much. Oh, Dean...)_

_Dean, pleading with his eyes for help. (I couldn't walk away. Not from you.)_

_Dean, horror and helplessness, as he was whisked away to stop Sam. (I wanted to go with you, but I had to protect you, and I did.)_

_Dean laughing, face flushed, guiding him back into the Impala. (I loved making you laugh like that. It had been too long for you.)_

_Dean looking at things differently. (Even me. What did Zachariah show you that made you pull away?) Dean gasping on the ground, face battered and bloody. (I hurt you. I broke my promise to not let any harm touch you. I'm so sorry. I...)_

_Cas! Cas, no, don't..._

Dean jerks back with a gasp, the connection snapping with such force that both of them stumble backwards. Cas holds his head with both hands, and Dean's upper body flops down. He braces himself, palms clenching around his knees, and tries to remember how to breathe. His shoulder smarts, and his head is pounding, his heart wild with everything Cas had showed him...

It's Dean who finally breaks the silence.

“I can’t—“ Dean shakes his head, trying not to meet Cas' eyes. “This—this whole thing is like…pulling on a ball of yarn. It gets all knotted and tangled up in me, and I—I can’t say that yet.”

“You don’t have to,” Cas says, placing his palm on Dean's cheek. “I know.”

Lying in his new bed, Dean, inside the quiet of his head, replays what he heard: _I love you,_ in a thousand different ways.

 

**Author's Note:**

> A sequel will be up soon, set in an alternate Season 9 universe! Hit me up on AnnaofAza on tumblr for updates!
> 
> Lines you recognized are taken from "Swan Song," property of Eric Kripke, writers, and company.


End file.
